Abstract
In 2014 ISIS exhibited worldwide the decapitation of the British journalist James Foley by Yihadi John. The pictoric framework of the execution is an explicit reference of a cult scene starred by Brad Pitt and Kevin Spacey in “Seven” and it is embedded in the century-long iconographic tradition of the Sacrifice of Isaac. The focused discussion will allow participants to explore and interrogate a number of controverted (and often disturbing) images belonging to this tradition that are being used to address contemporary wars in different regions of the globe: the reproduction of a detail of Carvaggio’s Sacrificio d´Isacco by an anonymous street artist at the entrance of the Brussels’s neighborhood of Molenbeek; José Alejandro Restrepo’s inquiry on colonial survivances in iconic representations of the ongoing war in Colombia; Peter Greenway´s and Saskia Boddeke’s “Obedience,” a video installation at the Jewish Museum of Berlin 2016. Some key questions will orient the collective debate: What makes a sacrificial act different from a murder? Who represents the victim, the perpetrator, the witness? Where to draw the thin line between what is representable and what is not? When an image-as-tabu turns into an image-as-fetish? Why the oblivion of representation can open up to the memory of icon? How to articulate politics and poetics of remembering?
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
KEYWORDS
Iconography, Iconology, Sacrifice, Regimes of Representation, Politics of Memory
Digital Media
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